This S**t is BANANAS....

Sums up yesterday's run nicely. Hmmph.
Shall we revisit Things I've Learned? Here you go:

1. Long runs on treadmills? B-A-N-A-N-A-S. Granted, it was out of necessity, but really. Sing me a lullaby now.
2. I can come up with a LOT of reasons to stop running, particularly between miles 3 and 6.
2a. I hate miles 3-6.
3. It's too close to call - am I just that mentally tough that I didn't quit, or am I just too bloody stubborn?
4. Clif Shotblox = vaguely cough-syrup flavored, but the caffeine is a nice touch.
5. The towel! Your nice gym towel does you no good at home on your kitchen island, just so you know.
6. Sometimes you keep running because it feels. so. good. when you stop.

I remember having to push through a big plateau when I got to a 4-mile long run. Is it possible that I'm having mental blocks in 4-mile increments? There was so much anxiety surrounding this week's long run (the dreaded 8-miler, round 2), and I'm not entirely sure why. Now that I'll be moving up to 9 miles this coming Saturday, I'm not feeling quite as much stress. Check back with me later in the week on that.

One thing giving me grief this week is the concept of goals and (possibly unrealistic) expectations. Because there never seems to be any sense in starting a project haphazardly, without a clear delineation of what I intend to accomplish, I set a bar for myself when I started training for this race. It's possible that I was a little, um, hasty when I set it. Suffice it to say I'm not feeling too good about my chances of living up to my own standards, and suffice it to say that's not sitting well. Somehow I'm having trouble wrapping my head around two ideas here: that for every person out on that road on that October morning, there are beaucoup more people sitting at home on the sofa; and that just getting my rear in gear and running 13.1 miles is an accomplishment in and of itself, no time goal required. Only the finish matters. I can't stand the thought of letting myself down, which is what I'm afraid of. The path out of my head is not clearly marked right now, and I'm stumbling around in here, and it's a bad neighborhood sometimes.

So yeah. This s**t is bananas.